More Topics

Weather Forecast

LETTER: Next time, Farm Bureau should support Measure 2

By Ralph Mueckefrom Gladestone, N.D. on Mar 2, 2014 at 3:03 a.m.

GLADSTONE, N.D. — Well, well, well! It looks like the chickens finally have come home to roost. I’m referring to a recent story saying that the North Dakota Farm Bureau has scrapped its plan to propose an initiated measure to reform property taxes (“Attempted ouster shows Farm Bureau’s political ambitions,” Page A1, Feb. 10).

I was a delegate to the North Dakota Farm Bureau’s annual meeting in November where the delegates voted to pursue that initiative. Myself and a few others tried to tell the group that this plan was really nothing more than an unworkable Band-Aid for a broken arm, but the majority of delegates were so intoxicated with political correctness they voted overwhelmingly to pursue it.

But in visiting with a person from the bureau’s headquarters, I think the Farm Bureau now realizes what Empower The Taxpayer and several others came to realize a long time ago: that the property tax system is convoluted, corrupt, unworkable and unfixable. But I doubt that they would be politically incorrect enough to admit it. Instead, they say that the Legislature should fix it.

They appear to have a very short memory. All of the bills introduced to reform property taxes in the last legislative session were defeated soundly, just as they had been in previous sessions.

And remember, the North Dakota Farm Bureau was part of the special interest coalition that opposed Measure 2.

The only solution to the property tax dilemma is to abolish it. The North Dakota Farm Bureau just proved it. We don’t need the property tax: There is plenty of money to replace it, even without the oil boom.

Let us now get to work, and do another Measure 2. Remember three key words: Abolish, abolish, abolish!

This time, we can pull it off. Then, let’s elect more responsible legislators who will quit trying to grow bigger and bigger government and instead prioritize basic needs, putting them ahead of special-interest waste (higher education being a prime example).

By the way, I think I will vote to re-elect Doug Goehring for agriculture commissioner. How about you?